Saturday, June 14, 2014

He's suffering from dementia and bedsores, and his body is shutting down at a hospital in Washington state, court documents say.

On Wednesday, a Los Angeles County judge gave daughter Kerri Kasem the authority to have doctors end his infusions of water, food and medicine.

The ruling reinstates the 82-year-old's end-of-life health directive.

Kasem's doctor concluded that continuing the artificial nutrition and hydration would only "at best prolong the dying process for him and will certainly add suffering to an already terribly uncomfortable dying process," said Kerri Kasem's lawyer, Troy Martin.

"The court's decision today upheld our father's explicit wishes as expressed by him in his health directive," Kerri Kasem said in a statement after the hearing. She was referring to a directive her father signed in 2007, saying he would not want to be kept alive if it "would result in a mere biological existence, devoid of cognitive function, with no reasonable hope for normal functioning."

Steve Haney, an attorney for Kasem's second wife, Jean, slammed the judge's decision, calling it "the functional equivalent of a death sentence."

"Nobody wants Mr. Kasem to die," Martin said. "The fact is that he is dying from sepsis and dementia."

What's next?

Now that Kerri Kasem can order doctors to withhold water, food and medicine from her father, will she?

She has before.

Over the weekend, infusions were stopped, but they were reinstated Monday after a request by Jean Kasem and under the order of Judge Daniel Murphy -- the same judge who reversed himself and restored the authority to Kerri Kasem on Wednesday.

Those are some of the first words that the public has ever heard from Justina Pelletier since she was taken out of her parents custody and into the care of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families 16 months ago.

“All I really want to be with is with my family and my friends,” Justina said in the video posted Sunday night.

“You can do it. You’re the one that’s judging this. Please let me go home Judge Johnson and Gov. Patrick,” Justina continued directing her comments to Suffolk County juvenile court Judge Joseph Johnston and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. “Please, right now. Please let me go home right now. I need to be home with my family and just please do it.”

MARTA police are looking for a man who was caught on video pushing an elderly man off a train.

Around 4 p.m. June 7, the unidentified man was seen pushing an elderly male patron and his walker off the train at the East Lake Station.

MARTA released the following statement:

"MARTA is a very safe transit system and we will not tolerate this type of behavior. Customers who witness any suspicious, or possibly illegal activity, are encouraged to use the MARTA 'See& Say' app that can be downloaded to their smartphones and puts them in direct contact with police dispatchers. Train customers can also use the passenger intercom units located in every MARTA rail car which will enable them to immediately alert the operator if any problems arise."

Friday, June 13, 2014

The article on the Public Guardian leaves out the abuse perpetuated by the system (“The elderly make an easy target for predators. Local law enforcement is stepping up,” May 15-21).
Families are made out to be bad (and sometimes that’s the case), but the system is really scary. Once an elder is “rescued” and put under the Public Guardian, the strategy is to isolate, medicate and take the estate. Like with professional conservators, a redistribution of wealth occurs away from families – it’s all about money.

If the family starts getting some unity, then efforts are made to divide and conquer.

Typically, the elder is denied contact with family, friends, and other visitors, and those concerned about his or her welfare have their character assassinated in documents handed to the court. Often, the conservatees are given dangerous antipsychotic drugs (often force medicated) like Seroquel that the FDA says can increase the risk of death for older people. One side effect is the drugs put the older people in a comatose state, and that makes them easier to manage, and hence more profitable for nursing homes. Once under these drugs, it’s easy to say the older person has dementia and is going downhill.

It’s people with money that the Public Guardian is interested in, and those people have their rights and freedom taken away against their will – and they’re forced to pay for all the “help” given them, the attorneys, the court investigator, and the whole profit-making network. No one seems to care about the welfare of people without money. For example, older homeless people are usually allowed to remain on the streets. If the Public Guardian gets ahold of them, they are typically sent to a miserable state-sponsored lockdown facility, in which they don’t live very long.

An anonymous call lead DSS to Newton’s door step to investigate, said Cleveland County Sheriff Alan Norman.

The disabled man was taken initially to Cleveland Regional Medical
Center and then transferred to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte.
The man had several broken bones, fractures and bruises.
Newton was arrested Wednesday evening.

Authorities are still trying to determine the duration of the alleged abuse.

“We are attempting to determine (how long) as the investigation is ongoing,” Norman said Thursday.
Newton, who authorities identified as the disabled man's guardian, was
the only other person that lived in the home at the time of the reported
assault and abuse, according to officials.

“This is a sad situation that has occurred. The investigation shows at
this time that the victim could have been assaulted over a number of
days,” Norman said. “Thank God someone called when they did or this
could have been a homicide investigation.”

But three years after her death, aged 104, Huguette Clark's sprawling 42-room
apartment on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue has just revealed its rarest treasure
yet.

A 1731 Stradivarius violin known as "The Kreutzer" after its former
owner, French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, has been discovered in a closet,
and is now expected to auction for between $7.5 million and $10m, the
New York Post reported.

Christie's has begun accepting sealed bids ahead of a final deadline this
Thursday.

“It would be the one violin that Kreutzer held most special to him and would
retain it throughout his life,” said a spokesman for Christie's.

Despite the Ohio Supreme Court signaling for harsher punishment, the court’s disciplinary board
is defending its belief that a six-month law-license suspension is appropriate for former Judge
Harland H. Hale.

A stiffer sanction would be out of line compared with the penalties imposed on other lawyers in
positions of public trust, says the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline.

Hale resigned as judge of Franklin County Environmental Court on May 24, 2013, after he fixed a
speeding ticket for a lawyer defending him against sexual-harassment lawsuits.

Last fall, the board recommended a six-month suspension for Hale for acting with “selfish or
dishonest motive,” but the justices rejected the suggestion and asked the board to consider tougher
punishment.

In a filing on Monday, the board did not back off its recommendation, even after finding Hale
gave false testimony at a March 3 hearing about when he resumed practicing law by failing to
disclose five clients he was representing.

The board said Hale was guilty of one incident of misconduct — fixing the speeding ticket —
while other public-sector lawyers have received half-year suspensions for ongoing misconduct and
criminal convictions.

Among others, the board cited the disciplinary cases and six-month suspensions of former Ohio
Attorney General Marc Dann and former Department of Public Safety chief lawyer Joshua Engel.
Dann resigned amid a sex-and-ethics scandal in 2008. His law license was suspended following
misdemeanor convictions for receiving improper compensation and lying on his financial-disclosure
statements.

Engel was fired in 2010 for illegally intercepting emails to state public-safety officials from
the inspector general and a
Dispatch reporter. He was convicted of misdemeanor counts of disclosing confidential
law-enforcement information from the inspector general.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Eight such shelters have formed an alliance and will meet this week
in suburban Cincinnati to share best practices and hear from experts on
elder abuse, increasingly recognized as a problem for the aging U.S.
population. It's estimated that at least 2 million older Americans are
abused, exploited or neglected every year, with many more cases likely
going undetected.

The model of giving older victims a safe place to get emergency
health, counseling and legal help while they stay among peers in a
senior community has worked well, said Joy Solomon, who helps lead the
Weinberg Center for Elder Abuse Prevention that opened in 2005 at New
York City's Hebrew Home.

"People are coming into an already established community of older
adults with professional care and where their dignity is primary,"
Solomon said. "Victims can begin to heal."

Solomon, a former Manhattan assistant prosecutor, said awareness of
elder abuse appears to be growing as the nation's baby boomers head
toward their 70s. The number of people in the U.S. age 70 or older is
expected to more than double, to 64 million or about 16 percent of the
population, by 2050. Elder abuse experts say most mistreatment is at the
hands of family members or other people close to the victims, and that
it's important for bank employees, neighbors and other people to be
alert for indications of physical and mental abuse. Solomon has provided
prevention training to such groups as New York City doormen and
apartment workers.

"People are being forced to take note," Solomon said, adding, "There's a lot more work to be done."

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) -- Unsuspecting seniors -- scammed out of billions of
dollars. It's a growing problem in our state. By 2020 -- it's estimated a
quarter of Arizona's population will be elderly.

A reason --The Arizona Attorney General's Office SAFEE (Stop Abuse and Financial Exploitation of Elders) task force held a public awareness campaign on ways banks are stopping this abuse.

More banks are training tellers because they often get to know their
elderly customers -- their routines -- their spending habits. So they
can be the first to spot something suspicous.

Case in point.

A teller alerted Tucson Bank Manager Sandi Smithe of a potential scam
involving an elderly woman and her gardener. "And she was right at this
second window and he was standing next to her and he was instructing
her. As she was rifling through her handbag, he said, 'This is the one
-- this is the one right here," she said.

It was a $20,000 CD, a certificate of deposit, that he wanted her to
redeem early and put in her checking account. A red flag -- in banking.
So Sandi stepped in. "Oh let me help you with that," she told the
elderly woman, "Let's go in my office and chat about this. And I turned
around and looked at him and said you need to have a seat right here.
Because my objective was I needed to separate these two." To
investigate.

And what she discovered, "He was asking her to buy him furniture, he was
asking her to give him money. He was asking for groceries, he was
asking her to support his family," she said.

And Sandi noticed something else during the discussion. "She was kind of
becoming lucid and then fading -- and then lucid and fading and I
realized we have a bigger problem than we thought we had," Cognitive
decline -- a common issue.

A reason the Arizona Attorney General's Office cracks down on anyone who
prey on society's most vunerable -- including those who are the worst
offenders -- family members.

"It doesn't matter -- we still make the report to Adult Protective Services," said Sandi Smithe.

So what happened to the gardener? He never got the money and he no longer has contact with the elderly woman.

There's been some concern about banks violating consumer privacy laws,
but federal regulators have come up with guidelines for financial
institutions.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

A former Ohio Supreme Court chief justice says legislative action
likely is needed to change a system that is failing to protect some of
Ohio’s most vulnerable residents.

“The guardianship system must be repaired,” said Eric Brown, who is
also a former Franklin County Probate Court judge. “In large counties
with thousands of guardianships, such as Franklin, I’m not sure that the
guardianship system can be fully and properly repaired through
(judicial) rule-making authority alone.”

Some legislators agreed after reading the Dispatch series
“Unguarded,” which reported last month that more than 65,000 Ohioans in
guardianships are vulnerable to abuse and neglect because of a lack of
state standards.

Unscrupulous lawyers are billing legal rates for non-legal work, for
example. One filed a $300 bill for having cookies with a person in her
care. Another billed people with dementia about $500 to $600 to buy them
a token Christmas present and for time spent wrapping and delivering
those presents.

Money-hungry relatives have lied on court documents about the
condition of their children, parents or grandparents and have stolen
from them, made easier because probate courts don’t check paperwork.

A guardianship is established by order of a probate court judge. A
person appointed by the judge takes control of decision-making for the
person declared incompetent, also known as a ward. A guardian can
request the relationship without ever meeting the ward or speaking with
family members.

As Arizona’s elderly population grows, law enforcement and
prosecutors are seeing an increase in the number of incidents of
exploitation and abuse against older people.

“People tend to think, ‘It’s never going to happen to me or to my loved one,’” said Rae Vermeal﻿ with Arizona Department of Economic Security’s Adult Protective Services.

But
just in the past decade, reports of elder exploitation in Arizona are
up nearly 50 percent, the agency says. In Pima County, they’re up 18
percent. (See﻿ “An Aging Population,” A4)

Sometimes
older adults are targeted through telemarketing and email scams. But
the most common way seniors become victims of exploitation is through
the greed and malevolence of those closest to them.

“About 90 percent of the time it’s family members or caregivers,” said Angel Guzman﻿, also with Adults Protective Services. “They feel entitled. That’s the unfortunate thing.”

Guzman
said the agency regularly investigates incidents where family members
entrusted to care for aging or disabled relatives liquidate the person’s
bank account, change wills or access inheritances early.

“It’s still a crime to take your inheritance early,” said assistant Arizona Attorney General Jesse Delaney﻿, who prosecutes many cases of vulnerable adult and elder abuse.

Delaney
said perpetrators, whether family or hired caregivers, will often seek
power of attorney over an elderly victim and then use it to run
roughshod over the person’s finances.

A judge ruled Monday that radio icon Casey Kasem, who remains in
hospice care, be fed and hydrated and that a court-appointed attorney
evaluate the health of the ailing host, siding with Kasem's wife rather
than her stepdaughter, who was named temporary conservator.

Superior
Court Judge Daniel S. Murphy said that Kasem, who suffers from Lewy
body dementia, should continue to be medicated at the discretion of his
doctors, according to court documents obtained by The Times, despite his
daughter, Kerri Kasem, moving to implement end-of-life measures.

Kerri
Kasem and her father's doctors in Washington had stopped hydration,
nutrition and some medications after they determined that the processes
became too painful for the 82-year-old, her attorney Troy Martin said in
court.

Martin told The Times that restoring hydration and nutrition would
cause the former "Scooby Doo" voice star "a great amount of pain."
The
judge set another hearing for Friday to receive an update on Kasem's
health after the court-appointed attorney goes to Washington to get a
status update on Kasem's condition and speak with the former "American
Top 40" host and his doctors.

But a rep for his daughter, who was
granted the temporary conservatorship on May 13, worried that the
decision may be for naught and believed that Jean Kasem, Kasem's wife of
34 years who has been feuding with her stepchildren over her husband's
care, was "distracting" the family from spending what may be their last
moments with their father.
The
point is, by Friday, will he even make it?" Kerri Kasem spokesman Danny
Deraney told The Times. "He's receiving hospice care now. He can't eat
anything, his body rejects it. He's in stable condition and there's
nothing more that they can do."

Jean Kasem, who had
previously been held in contempt of court for not cooperating with the
family, supported the judge's decision.

"Only God knows when to take someone," Jean Kasem said, according to the Associated Press.

Jean Kasem, who made headlines last week for hurling raw meat at her stepdaughter,
was in the Los Angeles court on Monday and reportedly broke down in the
corridor, falling to her knees as she repeatedly said, "Please don't
let them kill my husband," NBC News reported.

Jean
Kasem’s attorney Steve Haney said that his client "was very upset" and
she asked people in the hallway to pray with her to "please save my
husband's life."

On behalf of the Florida Court Clerks & Comptrollers Association,
we would like to thank Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, for his
exceptional work this legislative session to add additional scrutiny by
clerks over guardianship audits. House Bill 635, sponsored by Brandes
and Rep. Kathleen Passidomo, will provide a mechanism for auditors to
identify or investigate potential fraud or exploitation of the state’s
billions of dollars in guardianship assets.

Since 1989, Florida’s clerks of the court have been directed
by statute to audit guardianship reports and advise the court of their
audit findings. However, these audits have been limited in scope,
checking only for mathematical accuracy, timely filing and a
reconciliation of disbursements to court orders.

Some suggest that Florida has already reached a breaking point
for fraud in the state’s court-appointed guardianships, using
descriptive words such as “profiteering” and “racketeering.”

The protection of our most vulnerable community members should
be one of the highest priorities of public servants. And as keepers of
the state’s court records and with the current duty to provide cursory
review of annual guardianship reports, the clerks are the logical local
governmental entity for uncovering waste, fraud and abuse in
court-appointed guardianship cases.

With the passage of this legislation, we have taken a great
first step toward more accountability and curbing abuse by those who
would hold their own self-interests above the interests of those they
are sworn to protect.

In addition to allowing for closer monitoring of guardians’
fiduciary and financial responsibilities to the ward, this legislation
will allow clerks throughout Florida to create enhanced guardianship
audits in their offices, thereby enhancing the courts’ oversight of
guardianship cases.

The legislation also would further codify in statute the relationship between the clerks and the court.

We thank and congratulate Sen. Brandes on his advocacy and
hard work this legislative session to pass this good bill, making
Florida a leader in protecting its most vulnerable population by giving
clerks the authority to implement a consistent and successful enhanced
guardianship audit program in their counties.

Karen Rushing, Sarasota County’s clerk of court and
comptroller, is the legislative chair for the Florida Court Clerks &
Comptrollers.

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Marcia Southwick joins us to report on the convention held last week covering guardianship. Attendees came from various perspectives and countries.

The convention was sponsored by the BAR Association and the National Guardianship Association, among many other "stakeholders". Both groups, whose activities are diametrically opposed to their stated purposes, had intended the convention to be a huge marketing campaign.

Attending with the intentions of highlighting the real state of guardianship for profit, was Marcia Southwick and Elaine Renoire from NASGA. Many other advocates and activists, many of whom have been directly impacted by predatory, court facilitated guardianships, were also in attendance.

You are caring for a parent or spouse who is in the hospital. At
9:00 AM, your loved is told she’s being discharged by Noon. You had no
idea this was coming. Worse, she’s going to have complex care
needs—maybe wound care after surgery, or lots of medications to take on a
complicated schedule. You have no idea what to do next.

It is a familiar story that often ends with needless infections,
emotional distress, and costly and dangerous rehospitalizations.

Help may finally be on the way. In the past month, two very different
models have surfaced that will begin engaging family caregivers in
hospital discharges, and give them the information and training they
need to care for their loved ones once they return home. One expands a
powerful voluntary program that helps hospitals improve the way they
discharge patients. The other is new model state law that would require
hospitals to better inform and educate family caregivers.

The need is enormous. Under pressure from Medicare and other payers,
hospitals are discharging patients faster than ever. They often go home,
where with little or no professional assistance family members must
provide complex and difficult care. Not only must spouses and adult
children help with activities such as bathing, feeding, and lifting
their loved ones, they often must take on complicated medical care that
would otherwise by handled by highly-trained Registered Nurses.

A 2011 survey
by AARP and the United Hospital Fund found that half of family
caregivers perform medical tasks. Nearly 80 percent manage medications,
more than one-third change dressings and do other wound care, and more
than one-quarter use incontinence equipment or give enemas.

And they often do it with little or no training.

That may be about to change. One solution builds on a highly successful discharge planning tool called Project RED (Re-engineered discharge) that has been used by at least 500 hospitals
and some nursing facilities. RED, developed by Dr. Brian Jack and his
team at the Boston University Medical Center, is a carefully designed
toolkit that takes facilities step-by-step through a successful
discharge.

Now, RED has added a template for engaging family caregivers in this
process. The model was created by Carole Levine and Jennifer Rutberg at
the United Hospital Fund and Dr. Jack and Dr. Ramon Cancino at BU. The RED toolkit is here. The caregiver section is here.

It guides participating hospitals through several steps: Identify
the primary family caregiver, assess her needs (as well as the
patient’s), document the information, and train her in the skills she’ll
need to help her loved one after discharge. Ideally, this process
begins at admission.

(Reuters) - The
daughter of ailing radio personality Casey Kasem was granted
conservatorship over his health care on Friday, as a family
representative said the deejay "won't be with us much longer."

Kerri Kasem will
oversee the care given to her 82-year-old father said Danny Deraney, a
representative for the deejay's three children from his first marriage.

The
deejay's health care and visitation rights has been at the center of a
legal tussle between his children from his first marriage - Kerri, Julie
and Mike - and his second wife, Jean Kasem, with whom he has one child,
Liberty.

Kasem was
admitted to a Washington state hospital earlier this week in critical
condition, suffering from an infected bed sore. Deraney said the
deejay's health was declining on Friday.

"If
he opens his eyes, I want my Dad just once to see everyone standing
around him, putting our differences aside and let him know how much he
is loved by everyone, including Jean and Liberty," Kerri Kasem said in a
statement.

Bernard
Jordan, 89, left The Pines, a nursing home in Hove, England, on
Thursday morning and did not return that night. Dressed in a gray
raincoat with a jacket underneath that had his medals pinned to it,
Jordan took a bus to France to be there for the anniversary of the
largest amphibious assault in history, according to a report by The Guardian.
Meanwhile, the nursing home reported him missing to the Sussex Police
at 7:15 p.m. on Thursday, resulting in a search of the area and local
hospitals.

At 10:30 p.m., the home received a call from a younger
veteran saying that he met Jordan on the bus and that he was
accompanying him to Normandy. Gracewell Healthcare, which runs The
Pines, confirmed it was Jordan, who is also a former mayor of Hove.

"Gracewell
Healthcare can confirm that The Pines care home resident Bernard Jordan
attended the D-Day commemorations in Normandy today,'' Gracewell
Healthcare CEO Peter Curtis said in a statement to TODAY.com. "Mr.
Jordan has full capacity, which means that he can come and go from the
home as he pleases, which he does on most days. At no stage was he
banned from going to the commemorations."

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Victim stories are written and submitted by individual victims. NASGA has no knowledge or responsibility as to the accuracy or validity of their statements. Use of any such story or information contained therein in any manner is not authorized without prior written consent from NASGA or the individual author.

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NASGA

NASGA (National Association to STOP Guardian Abuse, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) public-interest, civil rights organization formed by victims of unlawful and abusive guardianships and conservatorships. We seek legislative reform of existing law and upgrading of criminal penalties for court-appointed fiduciaries misusing protective proceedings for unjust enrichment and engaging in elder and family abuse.

Our mission is to promote the safety and well being of vulnerable persons subject to injury and damage in their person and property through unlawful and abusive guardianship and/or conservatorship proceedings; to end the growing violations of due process, civil and human rights; to work towards ultimate legislative reform of guardianship as presently practiced; upgrading of criminal penalties for court-appointed fiduciaries misusing protective proceedings for unjust enrichment; and to be a support organization for victims and their families. We carry out our mission through research, outreach, education and advocacy; and going forward, by alliance with community interest, law reform, civil rights and other advocacy organizations.

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